That said, I've been working on my art skills on and off the past few years and thought it would be the time to actually start making one. And I'm getting up there in age, I do want to explore this side of the fandom where I'm usually behind the camera.
I'm active primarily on Mastodon if you want to get in touch.
Finally got around to swatching and mixing the colours that I have. I think I've found a mix that I like for the blues. They're not that close to the actual colours of my fur but they will do for now.
I mentioned yesterday that using a brush to paint the fur worked really well, and this time I tried it using the paint with fabric medium to see if it helps stick the paint better to the faux fur.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take some before photos :/ The fur swatch on the left has paint mixed with fabric medium and water applied, and the one on the right is only paint mixed with water.
In addition, the watch on the right dried much lighter than the one with the fabric medium. These were washed at the tap, and I used my paws to scrunch up the lower half of each swatch.
I must say, more tests need to be done but I do think the one with fabric medium _appears_ to hold the paint better after washing. Also to note, the swatch with fabric medium, the fur does not seem as fluffy as the fur with pure paint. The fabric medium version dried with the fur sticking together, but separated pretty easily with a metal brush followed by a tangle teezer. The pure paint version only needed the tangle teezer to regain its fluff. I'm likely going to use the fabric medium from now on as it _feels_ like it helps the paint adhere better. Maybe someone with a better test regiment could try this test down the line.
Finally, I think I have a reasonable way to mount the eye mesh - the green piece will be glued to the headbase, and the yellow piece is designed to hook into the green piece, and it has holes in it for zip ties to keep that hooked state. The opposite ends of the eye mesh mount slips into two prongs that also have a hole that allows a zip tie to lock them in.
I don't think this is the most elegant of solutions, however I've spent so much time spinning on it with nothing to show for it, and it does allow the eye mesh to be replaced/repaired easily.
I also finished up the padding mount. This will allow the padding to be moved closed with different pieces.
This is the upper head base with some extra air holes cut in, am thinking of using the nylon mesh that I've no use for to cover those holes. Alright, let's go!
First print of the fan mount! Seems to be good! I really need a pair of calipers - I used a ruler to measure the dimensions of the battery and added some padding but in the actual print, there was no padding for the battery and it fit in snug and perfect. That works but it was pure luck :/
Making some adjustments to the print like expanding the hole to the usb port - my thicker usb cables do not fit in.
Unfortunately, I forgot to buy some heat shrink, so can't really solder the parts together. Oh well.
One other note: I did design this for use with those 9v batteries that can be charged via a usb cable. I don't think this is the safest, mounting a lithium ion battery in front of my face - I would suggest using multiple nimh AAA cells for this. No excuses on my end tbh.
Did some glue testing today, I still haven't got a hot glue gun yet :/
But I tested the bostick soft plastic adhesive and some generic contact cement and both turned out pretty good attaching the faux fur to the tpu. I'm a bit more biased towards the bostick adhesive as the contact cement smells :/
Had the last of the parts arrive today, so got around to making a mount for the fan. I want this to be removable, so I've made a design that has 4 rails and troughs, letting the fan mount slide in. To secure it in place, there is a hole on the top that I can thread a zip-tie through that will stop it from reversing out. I should do something similar for the bottom but I'll see how it goes.
Since the test print on the interfacing fabric for the eyes went well, I wondered if the printer will print on canvas. It does! However, after the print the printer started printing lines and I had to do a head cleaning which thankfully sorted it out. I don't think I'll print thick fabric through my printer again XD That said...
I recently got a flexible high gloss coating that I wanted to use on the claws. I also thought this might be useful to waterproof the prints on the canvas, and I covered half of it with this flexible gloss coating. The coating added a slight colour cast and made the print more fuzzy.
After washing the print (this was after a day of drying btw), the uncoated portion lost alot of colour but the coated portion seemed to keep most of the ink - to my eye the washed portion seemed to lose definition, likely because I was scrunching the canvas up and the fibers moving about would (possibly) cause that. Forgot to mention that I applied this gloss coat to both sides of the canvas.
If I was to do this again, I would like to try first ironing the canvas to make it flatter, then coat the back side with the flexible gloss coat, print, dry, then apply the flexible gloss to the front. I still haven't gotten around to getting an iron, and am curious if ironing would "fix" the ink. I doubt it though. My next text will be to try airbrushing the canvas.
I don't think I want the shoe uppers to have _that_ detailed designs, just want something to represent my fur colours and a rosette or two.
Not shown, but this canvas was taped to a thick sheet of copy paper (140gsm) before going through the printer. I'll bet feeding this directly to the printer would cause jams immediately XD
This video came across my feed, it showed someone painting their faux fur shoes using a brush. I decided to try it out and it worked really well! The first photo with the 3 fur swatches shows just one pass of the paint I let dry overnight.
The orange patch I had saturated it with the paint, all the way to the backing, and I thought it would be super stiff.
However it was still quite fluffy, and after going over it with a brush (I used a tangle teezer) it felt really good!
The blue patch on the right I only dipped the brush in the paint solution once, and just kept pushing the paint around with the brush. In this case the paint did not cover much of the roots of the fur, and the fur feels just as fluffy as the orange patch.
Overall I think this is likely the way I will go forward with colouring fur, the airbrush doesn't penetrate to the roots of the fur, and I need multiple passes to do that while combing the fur to show the roots. Another technique I tried was using a sponge to dab paint on the fur, that kind of worked but the fur didn't feel as fluffy as this techique and required lots of brushing. The brush was the cheapest nylon brush I could find btw, 60 cents sgd lol. I'm sure an old tooth brush would work fine. The bristles on the brush I used are pretty stiff, not sure if that matters for the fur of this length.
The 2nd photo with two fur patches is after washing. I ran water on half the swatch and used my fingers to mush up the fur. It's not that obvious in the photos, but the half of the orange fur that I mushed up did lose some paint, likewise for the blue patch. Even so, I think this works great! For the next test I will try putting some fabric medium in to see if it helps the paint adhere better.
Last note, the fur is shaved down, and I was using the number 1 guard on my shaver. Kinda pointless since my shaver is like some random cheap thing off. but just in case.
No pictures here, but I also did lots of testing gluing various materials I'm using together. I'm sad to say the neoprene resisted any of the glues I have. As such, I went back to using tpu for the "upper midsole".
This time I went all out and sewed up the full shoe uppers. The 95A tpu I used here is really difficult to punch through with my hole punch. But I got it done, used a basting stitch to hold the shoe uppers in place, after which I used a straight stitch to firmly attach the two pieces together. Unfortunately, I am unable to sew the heel area together - my presser foot does not have enough space for the canvas.
I looked online to see if there are any narrower presser feet but did not find any for my Brother machine. I think a free motion embroidery foot would work. If not, I think sewing the heel area through the holes used for basting it would work?
The next step would be to glue all the pieces together, which I'm kinda reticent to do because... fear of failure. But heck it has to be done and these pieces aren't the ones I wanna bring to EF so.... I'll get around soon.
I do think I need to create a way to clamp the pieces together, probably just PLA pieces shaped like the inside of the shoe and outside to apply force evenly while the glue dries.
Got around to shaving the fur and sewing up the fur. The stitch I used is very thick, for the final version I'm going to use something flatter.
I also have some 1.5mm neoprene arrive waaay earlier than I'd expected, and used to to make the "upper midsole*". I punched some guide holes so I could use a basting stitch to attach the shoe uppers to it.
This worked great! I can sew the actual final stitch without worrying about the canvas squishing up.
The final photo shows the dry assembly and see where I'm going with the shoe's uppers - I want them to be frayed in the final version, giving the appearance of a foot paw bursting out of a shoe.
The middle photo above shows some of the stitches I sewed in that I hope will prevent the canvas from unravelling lol. I need to make some cuts and tear the canvas up tomorrow to see if they will work. I also need to get a large spool of thread, these tests eat up thread really quick.
* I have no clue wha the proper name is. It's the piece where I'm sewing the shoe uppers to, after which will be glued into the mid sole.
Primarily making modifications to the shoe today, almost there with the canvas but I'm having difficulty sewing it to the tpu piece that will be glued to the midsole.
Thought about it for awhile and decided to make some holes in that tpu piece to allow me to sew a basting stitch. Hopefully this will allow the canvas to be sufficiently secured before the sewing machine makes the main stitches.
Also painted the claws black but er, I'm yawning and it's the orange claws from yesterday, painted black. So no photo. XD
That said, yesterday I randomly found a company that sold varioshore TPU (82A-60A!!) and I ordered some. I did not expect it to arrive just a few hours after ordering! So I got around to testing that TPU. I just went straight for the 60A hardness by maxing out the temperature and it worked off the bat with no issues - I thought this was a local brand but it was actually filament from Spain, from a company called Recreus, and the filament is called Filaflex Foamy.
They have an excellent page detailing the settings required to print this tpu and these settings worked off the bat. One thing I noted that I thought was odd, was the flow rate - the larger the nozzle used, the higher the flow rate should be. I was like... eh? I always read that tpu needed to be printed _real_ slow but no, this danged varioshore tpu printed perfectly fine with the flow rate set to the suggested 7.9mm3/s (0.6mm nozzle). I was super chuffed as that was double the slicer's default flow rate of 3.5mm3/s, very close to petg flow rates.
I then wondered if these settings would work with that frustrating roll of 85A filament that kept jamming. I tested the day before, setting the flow rate to less than 3mm3/s and it did help, but still jammed.
Surely using 7.9mm3/s would just... jam on the spot? I shrugged and tried it. Somehow, it worked! The 85A tpu that kept jamming printed out the front of my shoe at the first go!
The settings included a 248C nozzle temp, 0.3mm layer height as well as not having any part cooling at all. With the front of the paw printing fine, I sorted out printing the other
pieces and cut out some canvas pieces for the shoe's upper.
Unfortunately, the shoe uppers don't fit the way I hoped they would from the simulation and tomorrow I'll be doing some paper test prints before going down the rabbit hole of cutting and sewing canvas. I forgot to mention a few days ago I also 3d printed a sole from 95A filament and it was far too slippery to use. I thought if I were to use IRL I'd best get actually sole material with proper tread, so ordered some and that will take a week or so to arrive.
The midsole feels alright using 85A filament, though I think my design might need more thickness for durability. For the moment, the varioshore will likely not be used for the shoe.
One thing I did try was use it for the nose. This design has some air holes.
The air holes makes the nose significatly harder, so I will be moving those holes off the nose and onto other areas - can't have a snep nose be hard! Gotta boop! Oh, and will probably print the ears with the varioshore too.
Varioshore filament is extrenmely expensive - 1kg of petg is SGD14.4 at the time of this writing. The varioshore I got is SGD62 for 600g! OUCH! This is slightly migitated by the fact that for the 60A shore hardness, you only need an extrusion multiplier of 0.75. I'm going to be pretty picky for what this is going to be used for.
Finally got around to integrate the front of the foot paw into the shoe, making a pattern then cutting out some fur. Right now i'm making a prototype for the right foot only.
Very small updates today, mainly just modifying some parts to use bigger 11mm press studs.
(1. Liquitex Soft Body Colors Referenced Next)
(2. The following text is more of a reminder to myself)
(3. Mixing IRL, subtractive mixing, can be done using RBY or CMY, I am choosing RBY as that is how I mix my watercolours.)
I think Parchment works very well with Transparent Mixing White, on its own it feels a bit too saturated and dirty looking. Pthalo Blue GS is far to saturated for my taste. Mixed with Ivory Black and a dash of Parchment gives a pretty good result for the darker rosettes. Cadmium free orange is also a bit too loud and yet part of me wants it too be loud since its my highlight colour.
Tests mixing Pthalo Blue GS with Parment result in a blue that's more muted with a greener bias (parchment is yellowish off white, and combined with a green shaded blue would push it green). I like this colour! It is not the right shade of blue for mid-tone blue for my fur but if I can't find the blue I like, this would do.
To get closer to the blue I want I need it less saturated - I need to add red to it since red reduces the contribution of yellow and blue (RBY mixing). I don't have red but I do have Cadmium Free Orange, I should try mixing those two.
Another idea I've considered is using Parchment as the base for ALL the colours going on the fursuit, I've seen some artists on youtube use one colour to as a key colour for a "unifying palette" and that is osmething I should try. I really should, as all the colours I like are mixed with Parchment and the out of bottle colours are a bit too saturated.
The new airbrush I got comes with a 0.5mm needle, it's the cheapest I could find (20sgd). Super basic - fixed paint cup, dual action, limit stop for the pull back action. That's about it. The rear half of the body is plastic. It flows much better and handles thicker paint without any clogs.
Also, hole punch arrived and it takes alot of effort to punch through canvas. It's one of those you see with a rotating ring of punches. I think one of those hand held punches that you slam a hammer into would be much easier to use though its noisy and could result in injuries if you miss the mark! The eyelet punch, thankfully doesn't require a supreme effort of strength to work. The shoe is almost ready for its first prototype to be created - day before yesterday I was figuring out a shoe cap (trial and error) that would fit me irl as well as settings on my sewing machine that would allow me to sew through canvas and tpu at once - just need to increase the tension on the machine and that sorted out the birds nests.
.... so I did do stuff that day, just forgot it. And too tired to write it down. GRAAAH. Oh well, guess I didn't do that much on my fursuit yesterday, because I was sewing up my first (under) garment.
I'd printed the eyes on a piece of regular A4 paper, then lined up the cotton mesh on the paper then sent that again for print. Did a colour print to make sure the printer works fine and it does.
Right now I only have some parts that hold the mesh eyes which are they taped down inside the head. Gotta design some mounts next.
Had an idea today, instead of painting in eye detail into the resin, why not just use the resin purely to catch highlights and have the eye detail painted on some nylon mesh? I tried this out, the horizontal ones are done using a painbrush.
The stencils for the eyes are just 3d printed. I don't think I have the right paint/airbrush medium mixture yet, the airbrushed version is much fainter. Good enough for testing though!
Got around to making a quick holder for the resin eyes as well as a frame to hold the mesh. 2 part epoxy was used to hold down the resin eyes to the frame.
The painted mesh backing unfortunately did not work at all! I can barely see the colours through the resin eye. More importantly, the visibility through the mesh+eyes are essentially useless, so I switched over to printing some paper eyes to use as a backing. This seems to work pretty well! Tried a few sizes and found the ones with the larger iris more appealing.
Next is to get figure some way to mount the eye frames to the head base, and update the cheek padding to use press studs.
Really happy with this! The press studs work really well to hold up the internal padding! One of my goals for this head base is to have the padding be easily removable for washing, this works! I'll be working to update all the padding to use press studs.
Resin stuff came in, did a quick test and it turned out pretty cool! That eye was done using the biggest mold (3cm diameter). I then did a version with 2.5cm diameter, which was the size I'd designed for, and this is what it looks like:
I'm not sure I like it. Gonna sleep on it. Likely going to cast the eyes in 3cm and see which I prefer. Oh, the photo above I also painted the lips and eye sockets black, can't wait to see that on the final version :3
Urgh not very productive today, been trying to get the 85A tpu to print... keeps jamming for some reason, and I am wondering if it's these little kinks in the filament :/
Had some 8mm foam arrive today, and it's the perfect thickness for the padding up top! Just need to figure out a good way to mount it.
So gonna try this concept, the internal support has multiple small holes that that I can sew some press studs into. The 2nd image shows the pattern for the padding. Should work!
Sewed up some straps with press studs as well as some new designs to hold those straps in. These did not work as well as I'd like, the padding does not stay where it needs to stay
in the base, so I'll have to think up something else.
Also got around to figuring out how to export patterns directly from houdini, it's actually quite straightforward - 1cm = 118 pixels. That's it.
Sewing up the uppers was pretty straightforward, need to figure out how to attach them next.
Attended a sewing class today, learnt how to use a serger, how to take measurements, and sewed up a small drawstring pouch :3
Would _love_ to have a serger but those things are LOUD! Gonna just use my overcast foot for now XD
If you're in Singapore and want to learn how to sew and more, check out Fashion Makerspace.
Before class though I went to SMHCRAFT in Chinatown and bought alot of stuff I needed like press studs, canvas, buckles, canvas belt and more. Nearby at People's Park Food Centre, there are lots of fabric shops. Went past one that was selling stuff like rayon, and what looked like technical fabric. For the moment I'm doing my prototyping with the cheapest poplin but the final version definitely gonna use some fabric that has wicking capability.
Also picked up some magnets on the way home, and spent the evening 3d printing the new parts, sewing and assembling them together.
Short Vid here showing the new magnetic tongue, as well as the press studs sewed into the jaw padding. Pretty good day!
Got around to cutting the fur out today! Gonna leave it that way for now though - I want to compare if the paint sticks better on washed vs unwashed fur.
Next a quick test with the eyes:
That works! I spent some time looking around for resin eyes and was about to get some when I asked myself... How are resin eyes made? More of curiousity as I have zero interest in getting a vacuum pump. Discovered... tutorials of people making eyes (not fursuit specific) using UV Resin! (o.0)
Gonna experiment there XD The required components aren't expensive, silicone mold, uv resin, uv light source. Already have paint.
This is going to be a departure from the mesh based eyes but I feel if I can get it right, it'd look much better as my snep is on the semi-realistic spectrum.
Last of the day I spent sewing up padding and making geometry that hopefully can hold them securely.
The bigger blocks are for my cheeks, and the smaller one with the flaps is padding for the jaw opening mechanism.
The tpu was just not melting at all. I cranked it up to 200C before it worked. It seems to hold up well though I haven't tried forcefully popping it. I need to do a few more tests with adhesives to decide which one to pick.
Another idea I'm floating is to make multiple tail inserts - that way the tail might be more flexible then just one large inflatable insert.
Got the patterns cut out but I've been leery to do more.... self doubt if I can actually airbrush this thing - concerns about if the paint will stick, if the paint will wash off.... sigh need to test. Tomorrow.
Bounced around to work on the padding. I tried using pu foam for the top but the 3cm foam I have is far too thick and messes up how the headstrap grips my head. I then experimented with some polyfill filled shapes and the one I did could be better filled. Am pondering if I should get like eva foam just for a bit of cushioning not necessary padding. I checked the prices on those and ouch, pretty expensive. Another idea is to smooth the insides of the base (at least the area around the top of the skull) and use minky fur as a lining. Lion christ minky fur feels soooo good on my paws, I'd love to be wrapped in it. That's yet another tomorrow thing.
Also did some changes to the jaw structure - the green arrows point at places where magnets will be placed. Gonna try magnets for the tongue. I got some N35 30m m x 3mm magnets today and oh boy, those things are extremely strong, they started to repel each other ~5cm apart. Far too strong I think, so I've got some N35 5mm x 3mm ones on order.
Finally, I also figured out some ways to attach the padding used to open the jaw (orange circle) - just some straps attached to the padding looped through those slits should hopefully do the trick. I might need to get some interfacing fabric or heck plastic mesh slotted in what fabric I'm using for the straps just to firm them up.
I mostly worked on the tail today. Given that I am going to be airbrushing the entire thing (I still haven't tried mixing the acrylic paint with the airbrush medium... aaaaaa) I decided to simplify the model so that can be made from an upper/bottom section. It'll likely be 4 pieces as I don't think the fur I have is that long - it's 1.3m on the long end and the fur I got is only a meter long.
The pattern will be printed on A4 paper, and I thought the easiest way to make some sort of registration markings was to create a template that I can overlay one edge over another. After messing around with some ideas and test came up with this:
This matches the exact size of an A4 sheet, 297mm by 210mm.
Individual sheets of paper will overlap over the circle/cross marks; the paper above will have the circle cut out, to align with the one below.
This was a pain to setup in Affinity Photo, though.
Printing it was also quite annoying, I would select a particular alignment layer, then switch to the crop tool (which automatically crops to the contents of the selection) then perform a crop. This leaves me with a perfect 29.7cm x 21cm area for printing. I did this 16 times and resulted in this pile of papers:
Yeah my room has no space to even put them down with all the stuff I bought for making the fursuit XD
TBH the size of the pattern irl just makes me tired just looking at it... can't imagine how difficult it would be to actually cut then sew XD
I put that aside for the day and looked into the head padding. I thought I'd try the PU foam and it doesn't feel as warm as with the latex foam.
Decided to bite the bullet and taped the entire pattern together lol. Much respect for other fursuit/prop makers who have to assemble a big pattern from A4 prints XD
Part of me wished I'd gotten an A3 printer, this would have been done so much faster. That said, I don't have the space for an A3 printer - the current printer I already have no space.
Which is an issue, as it's an inkjet printer and needs to be used occasionally to prevent the ink lines from drying up. Supposedly. Can't just pack it up and jam it a shelf until I need it.
This was a factor when choosing a printer - given I'm away for months every year, if the printer were to dry out, I'd rather it happen to a cheaper printer.
Printer arrived today! Quickly printed the pattern for the tongue and sewed it up. It's pretty asysmetrically, a testament to the amount of skill I have at sewing XD
The ladder stitches are also pretty bad lol. It does fit fine in the head base, but I need to re-think its attachment point. There are 8 small holes in the tpu teeth piece, and I don't think it's that good. I'm going to re-think this, maybe use snap buttons so the tongue can be removed for washing or swapped to another one. Maybe magnets?
Sewed up more padding - the base can now be worn though it wobbles a fair bit. Next up will be to apply some foam to the area around my temples to (hopefully) stabilize it!
The foam around my cheeks also seem to work well, and I want to do more tests where the foam is extended to spread the pressure. The base is quite warm, need to think of ways to intake/exhaust air...
After some tweaking I found a sole shape that I liked, so went on to print a copy from pla that included a fully raised circumference, as well as a (do not know the technical term) heel stop to see how it fits. It worked great! Next up I started on designing the shoe's uppers.
That did not go as well lol. I needed the left and right sections to be symetrical, but the curvature at the base of the shoe was different on either side, so I decided that I had to create a procedural setup that takes in the base curve and allows me to generate the shape of the uppers.
This is fine and dandy but would take annoying long to iterate if I had to test by printing a pattern or 3d printing it in tpu. Instead, I decided to run a vellum simulation that pulls the edges together. [ This worked pretty well ]!
The next step is to integrate the foot paw into the design - for eurofurence, I want this design to give the impression of a snow leopard paw bursting out of a pair of sneakers.
Did some more testing and it seems like 170 and up on my iron's display would be able to create welds that can resist being torn apart. That said, at that temperature the tpu basically melts into a liquid state - in the 180 example, you can see how much it spread out when I apply the roller to it. 170 doesn't spread as much.
I'm wondering if the 0.3mm thick tpu might be too thin and I should step up to like 0.5 or more. (shrugs)
After some more testing, I think the 180 setting is the one to use on my iron: It really welds both layers together. 170 setting is very strong, but going at it for a few times, I finally tore it apart.
Another thing I've noted is that the join can be sliced through when rolling if I roll on top of the middle heat resistant sheet. Photos to explain:
The first photo shows my setup: I have one heat resistant sheet covering my work area, I have one thin strip between the two piece of tpu I'm joining, and then more more strip on top to prevent direct contact between the iron and the tpu sheets. The 2nd photo shows the setup with the top layer removed.
If I were to roll over the strip that sits between the top and bottom sheets, that pushes the tpu sheet above against the edge of the middle heat resistant sheet, shearing/slicing it. I have to take care to make sure I only roll on the melted area only.
I've worked on the sole today, been trying to figure out how to support the arch of the foot and I decided that I am going for someing waaaaay simpler. The geometry around the arch is a bit too much for me to figure out without wasting lots of filament making adjustments. I think I would really need to do like a cast of my foot with a really good photogrammetry setup/laser scanner to get usable data. I'm just gonna go with a very simple outline of the foot as the sole and go from there. I wear minimalistic shoes anyways with zero support so I have no idea why I was thinking about that. If I really needed arch support, I could just buy some inserts and cut them to size.
Actual shoe contruction is far too complex for me to tackle, from traditional techniques (goodyear welt, blake stitch, etc) to crazy 3d printed stuff from Zellerfeld. I think I'm going to attack this with a hybrid approach - 3d printing parts of the shoe to be assembled together, not just 3d printing it all at a go.
Quick test with heat seaming the tpu. Tested on some small strips to figure out if the layerring of heat resistant teflon sheets above the seam would allow the heat to pass through without just melting the tpu - it did - so I proceeded to testing. Initially I thought it went really well, but after some testing the seams easily blew out by forcefully blowing into the valve (middle image). I then tried making the seams thicker and it seemed to work! I did notice that this caused alot of bubbling to appear (3rd image). I'm guessing that is caused by the moisture in my breath.
I then forcefully squished it, and it held up for a bit before one of the seams popped. :/
I was going to put the blame on the moisture, but giving it a bit more though, I wonder if it's because I might have applied too much heat, damaging the polymers? It is definitely hot enough, I did test touching the iron directly to the TPU and it resulted in a melty mess (Not the metal directly to the tpu though, the iron came with a sticker that was supposed to be put on before applying the iron to leather and I put it on.)
TPU for a 3d printer melts around 200-220C, and while I set the leather iron to 220, there is no guarantee that _is_ 220C. Am tempted to get a heat gun but do those work on reflective surfaces?
Gonna think for a bit. The glue did turn out great though! It seemed to have formed a good bond. It does looks a bit messy, and I think designing something circular to provide a clamping force might help with adhesion.
The jaw now works pretty well, the springs close the jaw fine, and the fangs slide into their slot perfectly. The internal structure has been modified several times, mostly beefing the connecton points up. I can't wait for the next iteration with all the padding in so I don't have to use my paw to hold up the back strap lol.
I've been amiss in figuring out the eyes. My original idea has been to use an eye mesh similar to toony suits. I've already aquired some mesh, and my plan is to airbrush the main colours (white/green/black) then use a paintbrush to (attempt to) put in finer detail. As yet I've not yet figured out how to mount the mesh. Have some ideas just need to think of a design that would fit into the head.
Been thinking about the shoe design as well, wish I have like at least an idex printer or tool changer just to have washable supports.
My tpu sheet arrived! It's a 0.3mm thick sheet that will be used to create an inflatable that fits inside my tail, instead of stuffing. I think I mentioned before this is to save weight and space when flying to conventions.
Atm I'm going to be making a very small inflatable to test out what kind of glues will work for the valve, as well as testing out heat welding the seams. I happened upon this Bostik Soft Plastics glue that can fix flexible materials like polyurethane.... which is tpu. So I've glued in a valve and according to the data sheet, takes 24hrs to set with max strength after 48hrs. Gonna leave it for awhile then :) In addition I've also glued together some printed tpu scraps to see if this glue will work.
The updated head was also printed, and the internal structure _seems_ to work. I did find that it's quite difficult to access where the nuts are to be placed, will have a think to see if I can simplify it.
The variable cheek padding also worked out and I know how much it needs to extend towards my face. The next setup will be to have it expanded so as to increase the surface area it can support.
I've re-topo'd the sculpt from yesterday, and did some sculpting on it. Can't wait to try making a shoe out of this :)
I think for the final version there won't be a hinge, I'm going to design some kind of support structure that attaches to the internal support, so it'd allow swapping to different heights/angles.
Another thing I'm considering is splitting up the head into two piece (or more). I don't like the idea. But it might make iterating on it faster - the rear end of the head is not going to change much atm only the front. Ahhhhh. I'll give it a think.
Currently just waiting for prints to be done, and I've come up with a better photogrammetry scan of my foot - I'm hoping to build a shoe made out of 3d printed tpu. This should make for a good reference. The tape I've attached to my foot has two purposes, first to help with the feature detection, and also a rough guide where the curve of the foot should should be versus my ankles.
The curve I drew around my foot was scanned in and scaled appropriately. This allows me to draw a shape that could be used for a sole. The foot scan should be able to be used as a rough guide
to generate a pattern for the upper.
I don't need the underside of the foot so with some dot product magic, pulled all the points that were facing downwards to y=0
And some sculpting in 3DC Printing to merge the toes/sides etc into the sole, as well as smooth out the overall profile. This is pretty rough, so the next step will be to bring it back into houdini to re-topo the mesh.
Totally redesigned the internal structure! Surprisingly this took only a few hours. I also updated the model for the teeth, the rear molars are more realistic. I've also added a piece that jutts out that allows my jaw to push down on.
This is an idea I am experimenting with. A piece swivels and allows for various angles. This theoretically allows for the angle of the base to be adjusted against my line of sight. Will it work? Well it's on the printer XD
Last thing I'm experimenting with today is a padding holder. I hope it will work together with the headband and the head attitude adjuster previously mentioned to hold the headbase to my head securly and comfortably.
Looks like I need some foam before I can make further progress :/ The straps are also far too long... do I need to rethink how the headstraps work?
In any case, I want to simplyfy the design by using adhesives instead of fasteners.
This are the parts that form the current design:
Here's my new concept design:
I actually made up a houdini digital asset to procedurally generate pegs that will automatically match the curvature of the mesh the red face is pointing at.
Screw mounts, in orange, are then glued to these pegs.
The internal structure is now just one piece and mount onto the screw mounts.
I need to try this out, I defintely have some concerns that excessive deformations will rip the 3 pegs off. However... petg has good flex so hopefullt it'll work. Also, I've tested some super glue that comes in gel form and that stuff is wicked strong - if something breaks it should be pretty straightforward to fix. Will still need to have a think to see if I can include some form of ability for the screws to slide horizontally to take up the deformation (slightly wider, horizontal screw holes might work?)
This design should also be slightly lighter!
Finally got all the pieces necessary to assemble the first prototype!!! Have encountered several issues that needs to be sorted and have also come up with some ideas to improve how the internal structure mounts to the head base. Issues:
I've also sewed the head straps, that's about all I had time to do, gotta wake up earlier tomorrow. No luck getting foam yet. Should also look out for what kind of technique that can be used to sew up the open end after I flip it.
Also the tpu parts with the new settings still have some stringing, but they're very much easy to remove with a lighter and the results are better too!
This seems to work well, so I'm going to try it on actual fur next. I am concerned how much ink I would actually need for the tail though!!!
I also tried getting the tpu filament to stop stringing and was successfull!
The next parts to print are the TPU parts (nose and ears) but I'm currently printing a spool holder that uses ball bearings to support the spool. Hopefully it works, as I don't like how much friction there is between the spool/spool holder. I think that is fine for non-flexible filaments but I'm wondering if for tpu, the friction (and release) would cause uneven extrusion.
I certainly do not see that, but yanno. It's something that keeps ticking in my brain.
Did a design for a spool holder that uses bearings, that will be on the ender 3 parts page. Had some valves arrive for my inflatable tail insert, which will take awhile to get to as the tpu fabric I ordered got canceled :/
Also messed around with the headband design, looks better now, but still needs to be tested in actual use. I'm not sure what kind of padding to use for it, I could use foam, though the idea of using printed tpu as padding is a possibility.
Other things I'm looking at are the fabric for the head straps. Looking into fabric that can wick sweat away and washable, and polyester and nylon fabric seem to be good options. Will be going with polyester as it's cheaper and also less stretchy, which will be good for something holding tight around my head. As for attaching the straps themselves to the headbase/headband, I'm thinking of using buttons, that way they can be removed to be washed and replaceable. ATM I'm thinking of plastic buckles for quick release, however I feel that adds a point of failure that is difficult to fix on the field - if a button pops at a bigger con, there is usually a sewing station to sort that out. Velcro is also an option I should consider...
Some random thoughts I've been harbouring... should I have got a smaller 3d printer and made the head base out of multiple pieces instead of printing all at once?
The head takes about 14.5hrs to print. If this fails, it's all back to zero. Printing in pieces would reduce this possibility.
In addition, I could have fit a core xy machine with a full enclosure, that would help with the heat buildup in my room. And noise. Hmmmm.....
This evening I also experimented with airbrushing the fur with Liquitex Acrylic Ink (Bright Orange). I think this went pretty well! I'd cut out some carboard to use as a stencil.
In the photo above, I examined the fur while it was drying, and the fur appears to stick to each other after airbrushing, I assume it's similar to how acrylic paints clog paintbrushes.
Once the fur was dry to the touch, I used a fur brush and the fur returned to its former lustre. Bright Orange though, is far too fluorescent for my taste. The next less bright orange is Yellow Orange, gonna get a bottle to test. The ink did dry slightly less saturated, but still very bright and fluorescent.
I'm pretty chuffed! I did note that the roots of the fur were pretty much untouched, I'd think on the real thing I'd have to apply multiple coats. Or perhaps, brush the fur so that it stands vertical, and then airbrush it while the roots are more accessible.
Going forward I'm going to make my tail and airbrush it entirely. If that works out, I'll definitely airbrush the head.
At the moment there aren't any colours that match what I want, but I do like their prussian blue and will start with that.
Now the orange was very easy to apply as I want it to absorb as much of the ink as much as possible. Not with Prussian Blue though, at masstone it is very dark, and I don't think I have the skill to apply light coats evenly. So this is my plan:
Use titanium white as a mixer. All the colours I want are far lighter than the full strength prussian blue, so in theory I could use white to lighten it up for more pastel-like colours . This should work for the 3 blues. Orange will be straight out the box, so no issue there. My belly fur is a shade of off-white though... I could just use the raw white fur (it is already a warm off white, but only very slightly) but I'm gonna see if Yellow Oxide (or Transparent Raw Sienna) lightened with Titanium White can give that effect.
For the airbrush, I picked up something I saw on youtube, a tiny little battery powered unit.
In terms of pressure, it is a far cry from the unit I had decades ago with a proper compressor and tank. But this worked surprisingly well for what I'd need, and my gut feeling tells me that it might have a very small resevoir, a tiny one enough for like half a second of airbrushing. The airflow was surprisingly smooth, I thought it'd go puff-puff-puff but I found it smooth, just not as strong as my old one.
The airbrush that came with it worked well too, a generic dual action. The package I bought came with an extension hose, metal and plastic cups and some cleaning brushes. It also has
a valve located on the opposite side of the paint cup. It is a "mac valve" and used to limit the flow of air. Never seen that before. If not, it worked like my previous airbrush.
Better actually, as mine did not have a limit stop to the pull back trigger. This is a nice feature, but one that I'd unlikely need for airbrushing fur.
One thing I'd note when buying a set like this is the availability of spare parts. Say I damage the needle on the airbrush, would I be able to get a replacement? Or heck if I decide to get a new airbrush, would the fittings be compatible?
For me this airbrush should last this fursuit building project. Just gonna be careful when cleaning it least I mess the needle up.
The 90% scaled one fit perfect! However, after some consideration I decided to go back one step - I would need space for the straps, and the most curved of the first set would have less of it touching my head at the sides, perfect for where the straps can loop in.
I had some difficulty wondering how to use this curve. Finally decided to just try skinning a few into a curved surface, give it some thickness then booleaned out some holes for the straps.
This seems to work and fits the back of my head well with space for the straps. When I get around to it I'll have to figure out what's a nice way to hollow it out for breathability and attach foam to it. Would also wanna see if I can make the design more aesthetic.
The next thing for the head will be to sew some straps to connect to the head base, and see if this will actually work to hold the headbase in place lol. That will take a day or two as it's a loooong print.
I've also had some white fur come in, gonna need to test airbrushing it, then washing the airbrushed fur to see how it holds up.
The supports for the inside of the jaw have been really difficult to remove, even though the supports in other places pop off very easily. I'm wondering what's up with that. Could it be some loss of (mechanical) precision at higher layers? Hmmmm...
After some looking into this, it seems like the folks there are using a Top Z distance that is greater than their layer height. In my case, it's below my layer height - I've experimented by setting the Top Z distance to ~110% of my layer height and that seems to have a reasonable gap in the preview. This doesn't explain why it works well for the lower parts of my model though, which now have their supports similarly moved down. Hmmm.
I thought maybe I could use a modifier to change just the top z height but that only work for the main options, not the support settings.
Here's what my original settings look like:
This is tree slim, and there are loads of branches, and the dark green support interface is pretty closely spaced.
(You can open the image in new window to view the full resolution)
I've adjusted the Tree Support Branch distance to its widest, this generates less tendrils. Top Z distance is increased to be larger than layer height (my current layer height is 0.36, half of line width of 0.72) and now there is a more visible separation between the interface layer and the layer it is supporting. I've also increased the number of interface layers and increased their spacing, this results in a sparser interface layout, that I hope will be easier to break.
I haven't tested these settings on an actual print but will report back once I do. I'm also pretty keen to see if these settings will work on TPU!
Also, for this print I added in some additional support structures at the base to increase the surface area, these were removed very easily after printing.
I never thought of that, I assumed it would be pretty lightweight. However, these are the estimates given by my slicer, rounded up to the nearest 5g:
Looking around for examples, this is pretty damned heavy! For example, Tioh's 3d print for the upper head is less than 300g.
A full tpu head using infill only is 6.3 ounces, less than 200g!
For the moment I'm not gonna fuss, my quest 3 weighs more than that I'm sure. *checks* What the hell, the quest 3 is just over 500g?! Oh dear, this _is_ going to be a heavy head XD
Anyways the modelling for the head is finally complete! A V1, at least. I'll be printing the parts over the next few days.
The next thing to work on is the strap to hold this to my head. I've had some early ideas that looked really terrible, so I've dropped this on the side for quite some time.
Now that I have to get it done, I'm printed out some various strips with various curvatures to see which fits my head the best.
I switched the machine over to petg last night, autoleveled etc. am quite tired of how slow tpu printing is. And yesterday I had some idea to reduce travel speeds for a tpu print in the hopes to improve quality but the quality turned out worse.
Today though, I started printing the 3cm hinge in petg. The quality of the top surface was quite meh, resulting in the parts grinding against each other, so I turned on ironing to see if there's a difference. It helped alot, visually, but the parts aren't perfectly smooth up top, usually there' a blob at the very end of the print. I suppose just running these prints over some sandpaper will sort it out, that in increasing the height of some of the geometry to give the parts more space to move. (Photos show surface of top layers ironing enabled vs disabled)
I think petg will be fine for this use case, tpu at this scale is far too flexible for my liking. petg just has a tiny bit of flex, enough to buffer against minor knocks. Also tried printing the lower jaw now that it's more or less done, unfortunately around half way through, I heard a loud crack and it fell over XD
Thankfull, it'd already printed out the area that will be used to connect to the internal structure, so I can still use this for fit testing. (The part was printed for speed not quality anyways)
The tree supports came off very easily :3 Would love one day to have a machine with dual toolheads, one head just for suitable support material.
I think I will add in some of my own supports to hold it up next time. And maybe increase the brim + slow down travel speeds.
The support structure for the teeth/gums fit perfect though! I will be making some changes to the geometry to get more strength, especially around the two holes for the tension springs.
After much thinking I decided to put the spring mounts on the tongue mount. Its counterpart for the palate will hold the other end of the springs.
I've also doubled the amount of mounting screws in the base, and spread them further apart to hopefully improve their load bearing ability.
First up, got a new print of the ear just to validate the gcode. And it works! No stringing at all for the important areas.
This one was a test with only 2 walls, and while I like the softness, I'm going to go with 3 walls for the strength.
Next, I got around to designing a simpler, more aesthetic looking structure to hold up the teeth/gums.
The previous design would be stronger with its crossbars and tongue-in-groove joints (that would require gluing together) would be much stronger. However there is no need for such strength (and the complications that come with it) since the inside of the maw isn't going to be supporting constant pressure.
The design I worked on today is designed to be connected via screws and can be quickly printed in petg.
The prints seem to be fine, though the holes probably need to be slightly larger. Or... just use a drill to enlarge them to proper size.
That said, the support that I'm most concerned would flex alot is fine. It's just going to support like 30g of 3d printed teeth lol.
Here's a video of it getting punched into my desk lol.
Notes to myself: Prints are using 2 top shell layers, should use 3 for final print. Should also try turning on adaptive layer height for the curved base support to get it _really_ smooth.
Started printing one ear in tpu and noticed there was alot of stringing. I wondered if there was a setting that made the head move inside the print and it seemed there was!
Setting "Avoid crossing walls" and dang, the only that are unavoidable are where supports exist. Now from what I've looked into, this is likely due to the "Solid Infill" when "Sparse Infill Density" is set to zero. Let's compare.
Once again, Sparse Infill is set to 0%. The image on the left has no travels across the outer walls as it does not have "Solid Infill" - this is because I set the number of "Top Shell Layers" to 2.
The image on the right however, has alot of travel across the outer walls, and it also has alot of "Solid Infill". In this example, the "Top Shell Layers is set to 3.
For some reason, when Sparse Infill is at 0%, the Solid Infill does not respect Avoid Crossing Walls. A quick workaround is to just set Sparse Infill to 1%.
If you want to keep your Sparse Infill at 0%, try tuning the Top Shell Layers. Reducing the quantity of top shell layers appears to reduce the amount of Solid Infill generated. Another method that seemed to work is setting the line width to really high values (setting 0.8mm on my 0.6mm nozzle seems to work.)
While the printer was doing its thing, I finished up modelling the teeth and gums. (The tongue is going to be made from minky fabric, so that's a stand in.) But how to mount them in the fursuit base?
This is something I whipped up.
All of these will be able to be printed without supports, and I've designed it to be glued together. (The little nubs are there because I haven't yet used them to cut holes in adjacent parts)
The entire structure is then connected to the base via screws.
I think this will work great BUT.... It doesn't look nice XD
I have another idea for a support structure that would look nice BUT won't be the strongest. Gonna zzzz then figure that one out XD
Am also wondering about putting a fan in the space - either in the lower jaw or the upper muzzle area. The upper muzzle area has ALOT of space.
Oh forgot to mention if you're curious why the teeth/gums are so short - the head base is very close fitting to my face, and that's basically the space available.
Got around to running a max flow rate test, and the extruder started to click after around 12mm3/s. This is pretty surprising as I've read normal tpu speeds are in the 3.5mm3/s range. For safety's sake, I've set it at 10mm3/s as a safety margin.
I'll test some hinges to see if it'll work in a real working case. But here's a photo of when the extruder started to click and extrude little bumps instead of a clean line.
Tried a few small test prints and those turned out well, so I thought I'd print one of the ears. Nope. After about 3-4 layers it started skipping. Boo. Oh well. Gonna go back to the 3.5mm3/s flow rate. Rather have something solid and usable then fast but finicky.
Got the 2cm and 3cm hinge design printed on tpu and I think both are a bit too flexy to my taste. I could be wrong and these are the way to go though XD
Am going to test the 3cm design on petg to see how that works - really want a bit of flex here. Worse case scenario I'll just use pla, the pla hinge prints feel really solid.
I also decided that... I'll make the teeth myself. While the pattern I've bought will work for sure, I kinda... wanna have an accurate representation of how the fangs in a snow leopard go together.
As such I designed a procedural system in Houdini that allows me to build a set of teeth. Here's a video showing how the teeth automatically align to the shape of the curve.
This way, I can easily tweak the sizes of the upper/lower jaw dentition. I've gone so far as to wrap it up as a houdini digital asset so there's a very simple interface to use.
Still a bit of ways to go, need to:
For the flow rate tests, it prints out a series of rectangles. Each rectangle has a + or - offset from the current flow rate. Once that's done I'd have to choose the best print - each print has a label with the amount of offset that can be added to the current flowrate. Once that is done, a 2nd pass with the new value can be done to fine tune the print quality.
A little note - My eyesight isn't the best to visually determine the best quality print from the lot. I've taken to relying on the reflection/highlights on the prints (visual) as well as the smoothness (touch) to determine this. The "best" choices always are the smoothest, and thus have a relatively flat and broad reflection. The ones that have too much or too little material result in bumps or dips, which are quite easy to tell via running a fingertip over them. These bumps also result in reflections that are broken up.
One very interesting observation is how flexible (or not) each of these pieces are. The test pieces with a higher flow rate (and thus more filament) are pretty solid, while those with lower flow rate (like -20%) are very floppy - for the exact same thickness.
This brings me up to my hinge design. The original one from a few days back is chonk, it's built around a tube structure with 3cm diameter, with a height of 11mm.
After observing the original design for a bit I had an idea, why do the two hinge structures need to move simultanously? Only one piece needs to move for this to work. I can up with this new 3 piece design.
This one is built around a 2cm diameter hinge, with a total thickness of 6.5mm. The prongs no longer have an offset from each other, and are 5mm at their thickest. Once the calibration is done I'm gonna print some tests with different thicknesses to find out what's strong enough for my needs. At the moment I'm thinking increasing the number of walls (and top/bottom layers), together with a gyroid/3d honeycomb infill will do the trick.
(This is over-engineering. I'm certain hinges for sale are more than sufficient for the task.)
So right I spent some time designing hinges. First up, why? I've looked at existing fursuit hinge designs and don't like that it's possible to overtighten the screws, and I feel that alot of forces are being handled by the rotating part of the hinge. Here's an example of what comes to mind when I think "fursuit head base hinge":
Now this is my design:
The assembled hinge is on the right, and there's an exploded view in the center. As you can see, there are two "endcaps" that hold the hinge in place, and can be connected using a screw and nut.
This captures the two hinge mechanisms, which are secured to the jaw/upper head.
At the moment I'm thinking the "endcaps" should be printed using petg, it should resist compression relatively well and the particular filament I have is very slick, though ideally, it should be printed using nylon, as I've seen mention that nylon has self-lubricating properties. The price of nylon filament though, ouch! Still the quanity required for just the endcaps is minimal.
The main hinge mechanism I would print using tpu to give it a bit of flex to take up any unexpected torsional stresses.
A few things to work on next. First, I want to re-design the "endcaps" so that they slot into each other and not freely rotate. That will reduce the chance of the screw/nut wearing loose over time (Note to self, use loctite). The head base mesh also needs to be edited to accomodate this.
Update: Oops, redesigned it.
Ok one last thing I would like to add to the end caps is some kind of inset so that the fasterners can be flat against the endcaps. However, that's on the side that's currently flat on the printer bed, so it would require some kind of supports for that to work. Gonna call this done for now and get it fitted into the head base.
I've been putting this off for a while - subdividing the model and getting some final details in. With the hingework mostly sorted out - I was thinking this morning that I should really beef up the hinge size - got around to rounding out the front of the jaw to add a black lip seen on big cats. This black area will be hand painted.
I've also printed another test using yesterday's model using petg. It's my first time printing with petg at such a large scale.
The print itself has a bit of give and the surface is very slick, almost feels oily compared to the pla print. (The pla print I also think might be a matte filament...) This extra bit of flexibility should be useful if I were to pack it into a very full suitcase. And I hope hot glue will actually stick the fur to this XD
At the moment I'm test printing a temperature tower for tpu filament.
This is my first time ever printing with tpu, and I had some issues getting it to extrude. It seems like there was some leftover petg/pla inside the nozzle and the tpu wasn't able to melt - the extruder kept clicking, indicating the filament could not be fed. After trying to "clean" the nozzle by running petg and pla through it, I remembered that the printer came with a long piece of wire ending in a loop labeled "nozzle cleaner" in the manual. I basically heated up the hot end to 240C, jammed it in and pulled it out, and it was covered in filament. I also tried letting the hotend cool down to around 100c before pulling it out. Once I did this a few times, the wire came up clean (though I could definitely feel some sticky filament at the very bottom of the nozzle, nothing came up).
Finally, I was able to extrude the tpu without issue. The photo above shows a temperature tower being printed.
I also placed some painter's tape down on the bed - supposedly tpu sticks really well to pei build plates, so well that the layer of pei on the build plate could be torn off. Painter's tape can be used to protect the build surface, as tpu seems to adhere very well to it.
Another thing about tpu/flexible filaments, is to have as little friction/resistance in the filament's path - given the filament is very stretchable, it can cause underextrusion as strethed and thus smaller quantities of filament are being extruded. The orange overhead spool holder is a design included on a usb stick that came with the printer; this design alleviates the need for a tube to feed the filament in and allows it go almost go directly into the hotend, without the need to travel around the bowden tube and all the extra friction that would have.
......
Whelp the temp tower is printed, seems 215-220c is the best temperature. Now the top of the temperature tower drops the heat levels to around 195c, and that jams up the nozzle :/
I had to do the cleaning routine again and it's printing fine now. TPU is such a fussy filament XD
Update: Ears are done! I'd printed one with 3 walls (1.8mm thick) and 2 walls (1.2mm thick). You can watch this video to see how they react.
The 3 wall version seems very usable! I am going to make a tweak in the design so that the flange holding the ears in are thicker. ATM they slide out of the cutouts with very little force. The 2 wall version tore apart when I was trying to remove the support material, and is a bit too soft I think.
I'm also going to try making a version with 4 walls to see how it feels. Personally I'd like to see the ears made from a softer filament. Right now it's 95A that's quite easy to get here. 90A I've only seen one local seller. But I don't reall need tpu ears that feel great, they're gonna be covered in fur and I really want the flex more for transport. So stop brain, stop. No buying softer tpu.
I'm also looking into making the hinge design more generic and can be shared with other furry makers. ATM the hinge design I have has one issue that bugs me: my original idea is to use a screw and nut to connect the two halves of the head base. I don't like that it's possible to overtighten the screw to the nut, though for simplicity sake, just making a good tight connection with washers (metal on outside, teflon on the touching surfaces) and a bit of loctite on the nut will do the trick. I've been working on a design that allows the fasterners to be clamped tight but still allow movement. This, on the other hand, is overcomplication.
Am gonna stew on it. At the very least, I've managed to stop myself from designing a hinge that uses ball bearings - tpu seems to be quite a pretty slick material, so it would work fine for moving parts. The PETG filament I have is also super slick, so that might be an option if I need something firm.
ANOTHER NOTE TO SELF: Original plan was to airbrush the white fur to more of an off-white. A better idea might be to dye it. Time to look up the lightfastness of fabric dyes.
Also need some kind of design to accomodate springs or elastics up front to close the jaw. I've
seen some examples where the hinge itself has slots to put elastics in and I think that is a very clever design, however,
I think putting the springs up front would not put so much stress on the hinge joint.
I'm also actively trying to not include a bearings for the hinges. Stop overcomplicating things, brain!!!
Anyways here's the design thus far. The red parts I plan to print in TPU, and the green parts PETG.
I've also included a closeup on the nose model, it has flanges that fit into the upper head base.
Also adjusted the topology, I do want to separate the nose apart to be printed with a tpu.
Pretty chuffed! It fits pretty well though I'm going to adjust the hole for the nose, that's waay too big.
I've also been messing around with the tail in 3D, and could not get a good shape. I decided to experiment in CSP instead and came up with a concept I liked. I then brought a similar shape into 3DC Printing, sculpted it then brought it back to Houdini.
I should be able to use the model as a pattern once I make the necessary cuts.
This brings up the question of how to actually get a physical pattern to use lol. I think I'll need a printer, likely going to get an A3 printer. Print the pattern in sections and stick them together. Another thing I haven't accounted yet is the direction of the fur.
Should be simple enough to just cut up the pattern to accomodate that.
Spent some time separating the ears from the head. I wanted the ears to be a bit flexible, so I thought I'd try printing them with TPU filament (Thermoplastic polyurethane, a similar material to what phone cases are made with). But attaching those to the head base might be a challenge - I'm not sure what kind of glue would work, and I'd rather use some kind of design that could hold the ears in place. Here's what I came up with:
I designed a flange of sorts around the base of the ears that, hopefully, will be able to slide into cutouts made into the base. (I did order some 95A hardness tpu filament, hopefully it'll be flexible enough!)
In order to secure it, another plate (shown in green) will hold the ears in place from inside. At the moment, I am planning to use some kind of mechanical fasteners (screws or otherwise) to join this plate to the main head - I am planning to use PETG filament for these two parts and am not sure what kind of glues would be flexible enough to bond petg together, given the amount of flexing a fursuit head will encounter.
I've also started some rough ideas on where to put in holes for straps to hold the head to my own head. It's my hope that the main head itself and the inner plate together will be strong enough to resist the deformation forces and not break.
Finally, I also wanted to put some holes in the mesh for ventilation/hearing but am concerned about weakening the area around the ear, given that it's got a big cut for the ears and strap holes. Will look into that later.
Still need to figure out the opening jaw :/
It was very straightforward to get into, and I'd got the head sliced in minutes. It takes forever to print something this big though, just under 18hrs >.>
The printer also only comes with a 0.4mm nozzle, and will need a bigger one to reduce the print time.
Another thing I've been looking into is making a custom inflatable to be stuffed inside my tail instead of using stuffing. I've already purchased some tpu sheets and pvc valves to test this out. The issue I've been looking into is how to make joins/welds that are airtight.
https://www.diypackraft.com/ was a site that came up in my hunt and it's more about welding TPU coated fabric together. They use heat for this, and I think this is probably the best kind of joint as the different layers of TPU melt and essentially become a single layer of TPU. Another option is to chemically melt the tpu, and achieve a level of bonding similar to heat welding is using a solvent called "Tetrahydrofuran". I am not able to find it locally. Yet. I also have read that it becomes explosive so yeah, I don't think I'm going down _that_ route.
An adhesive that _might_ work is "E6000". Lots of it available online here but I was somewhat concerned if they were legit and I was right. The packaging and branding are largely similar but not the same as the real thing. However, horme hardware and selffix does seem to carry it, and I don't think they would carry knock-offs. I'll get a small tube from them to try once the tpu sheet arrives.
.... I also should have mentioned that I could have gone with regular PVC sheets for this, that's what most pooltoys are made with after all. Quite a few sites have mentioned TPU is more eco-friendly, more resilient material so I went with that. How true those facts are though, I can't be sure, given how questionable information is on the internet these days.
Note to self: Some other adhesives to look into: aquaseal (its made from thermoset urethane, which uh, is TPU? Watersport and outdoor shops appear to stock them), barge contact cement, hh66 adhesives
I'm pretty sure I've overcomplicated the design, most moving jaw fursuits use a much simpler mechanism. For now I'm just leaving it here while I wait for a 3d printer to validate this design.
Another thing I'm looking into are designing my foot paws. I love the foot paws of this commission I got from Kaji:
I've seen examples of shoes 3d printed using TPU (Thermoplastic polyurethane), a soft flexible material similar to what what some phone cases are built from. I have been thinking that I could use that material to get a similar effect. I've no experience with TPU though, my previous printed had a bowden extruder that's not good for flexible filament.
As such, I've been looking into foot paw designs. I did this yesterday but I'm torn between more animalistic design vs a more normal human-ish foot.
This though, is kind of a waste of time as this mesh is not going to be rigged, it just makes me very satisfied to look at.
I also tested out making a simple tail, and using the UV Flatten sop's distortion view to make cuts to reduce those distortions, and then use the end results as a pattern. Given I'm hand-coding this website, here's a link to an mp4 that shows how the two parts of the tail flatten out.
Its too bad the model is not downloadable, but using it to get an idea of where the skull hinges is enough. As well as those teeth.
Also, I'd actually gotten some fake fur swatches from Miemifur on Aliexpres and spent time brushing them out.
Originally I'd wanted to get swatches from the usual suspects (Howl, BigZ etc) but the shipping costs from the US to Singapore were astronomical >.>
Plus, I didn't want to ruin expensive fake fur and decided a more budget friendly fur option for my first fursuit build would be more appropriate. I'd also gotten some "minky" fur and "rabbit" fur (?!) but they haven't arrived yet. Just small samples. I think the minky fur would be good for the hand paws, and rabbit fur is supposed to be courser and easier for newbies to work with. I'll see.
Once I've laid out the swatches, I realized that none of the colours are close to my reference >.>
For now, I'm actually going to do something crazy... I'm going to test out by building and airbrushing my entire tail and see how much that costs, and if I like the results. (I have airbrushed gundam/zoids before so hopefully that experience is applicable)
The miemiefur samples have two "whites", Pure White and Bleach. Bleach is... very white. Almost a pure neutral white with a tiny bit towards blue. Pure white otoh is a warmer colour. In either case, it's nigh impossible to tell unless they're side by side in good light. So my plan is to take Pure White and airbrush Liquitex acrylic inks on them and see if the results are usable.
Now this idea started because of the narrow orange stripe I have going along my torso and tail - if I were to use fake fur for that stripe I think it would be a pain in the rear to sew, as well as a big weakpoint. I thought, instead of using orange fur, I could airbrush the offwhite belly fur with orange, so there would not need to be a narrow strip. Then the blues and rosettes will be actual fur. I'll see how that goes.
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Also! My sewing machine arrived! It's a Brother A150 computerized machine. From what I understand, it's the top of the line for their Innov-is series that's for beginners.
A few reasons why I chose this machine:
(Items marked with an asterisk seem to be the important ones, from the fursuit making videos I've watched)
I've not used a sewing machine before and the included instructions for setting up the machine for sewing are not as clear as I'd like in some places. But. There are lots of amazing videos on youtube showing how to set the machine up and I was off to the races. The fabric I bought was the cheapest I could find at Spotlight (local singapore fabric/arts and crafts chain). The rest of the manual is fantastic though! Lots of details about how to use each foot.
There seems to be some wrinkling going on with the material and from what I'm looked up, it has to do with the needle size, I need a smaller needle.
Some thoughts on the machine after just messing with it for a few hours:
With the sculpt in a good place, I wanted to re-topo the mesh. The output from 3DC-Printing is only .STL format, a common format for 3D printers. Thankfully, this is also a format that Houdini can read easily. This is fine if you wanted to print it out directly but I wanted to work in some fine details, so started to manually re-topologize the mesh into quads.
It's been a long while since I had to re-topo stuff, so I thought I'd look into what Houdini had for automatic retopo and found the Quad Remesh Sop.
This is what re-topologizing a mesh is, making a mesh made from quads and triangles instead of just a mesh of triangles. The Quad Remesh SOP (SOP: Surface Operator, a houdini node) does an amazing job but I wanted very specific mesh lines as I want to flatten the mesh later to use as a pattern for the fur. Hence, I used the TopoBuild SOP to manually lay out the quads, using the triangle mesh as a reference.
The next image shows the upper part of the head fully re-topologized with mostly quads. Next, I used the UV Flatten sop to create a uv layout for this mesh.
Imagine if you tried to stretch out this mesh flat, the image on the right would be what it would look like. The UV Flatten Sop has a feature that marks out what areas are highly distorted. These are the areas that need cuts in order for the fur to be able to properly conform to the surface. Now I must say... I have no idea if this will actually work - in most fursuit tutorials, people will 3D print the base out then stick duct tape all over it, cut the duct tape in specific ways to create the pattern for the fur.
Given I'm not in a time rush and am very curious, I am gonna try and see if this will work irl.
The main "issue" is that in drawings and real snow leopards, their heads are longer than they are tall, unlike humans with taller heads that don't have a long muzzle. I looked through my old commissions and thought that perhaps I could shape the head like this piece I got from The Narutoshi awhile back that would fit the bill; by having a raised skull to accomodate mine, the overall size of the head could be scaled down.
However, after some fussing in Houdini, I realized that just tilting the head downwards provided lots of space for my head, and I only needed a small resculpt. Plus, head on, this looked very like what snow leopards look like!
I really liked the angular brows and pushed out jaw, and I decided to move my sculpt in that direction.
Results from the end of the day:
I first started sculpting without any reference and I ended up with this bear like head XD
After looking at photo reference online, I got a much better result.
I also decided to look at art that I liked for inspiration. Originally, one of my main inspirations for this project was this commission from Adeptusfuraffinitus:
I thought that would work really well for the head, being quite stylized. However, there is another artist that does lovely feline heads, Volcha (Warning: NSFW). I'd also gotten a comm from them before and loved how he drew my head. In the end, I made up a mood board with all these heads as inspiration:
At the end of the day, taking inspiration from the mood board this was the result I got:
